Sexiest Color

The Color That Makes EVERYONE Look Sexier

Basically, it should be on anything and everything you wear.

The Color That Makes EVERYONE Look SexierBasically, it should be on anything and everything you wear.

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This article was written by Alice Park and repurposed with permission from Time.com.

When it comes to feeling sexy and romantic, red is the first color you think of, right? Red lips, red lingerie, red dress—all red everything. Studies show men perceive women who wear red on dating profiles as both sexier and more open to a sexual encounter.

Red, it seems, sends a very clear message about sex. And now scientists add to the scarlet sex literature with this piece of data (which we reported on earlier) in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Turns out it's not just men, but women, too, who see women who dress in red as more overtly sexual and open to having sex. Not only that, women perceive other women who sport red clothing as sexual rivals (like going after their partner), which raises their competitive instincts and leads them to think negatively about their ability to maintain relationships and be loyal.

So does that mean every time you wear a red dress your female friends see you as a romantic threat who is about to move in on their partners? "I don’t think it's the case that women who wear red are always advertising sexual interest," says lead study author Adam Pazda, a graduate student and social psychologist at the University of Rochester. "But there is evidence that people make judgments about other people in general based on clothing. You can see how color might easily fit into that."

Studies have also shown that people who view pictures of female news anchors in loose or tight-fitting clothing perceived those wearing the form-fitting outfits as less competent, says Pazda. This is possibly some derivation of the idea that they were dressing for sex and therefore somehow less able to do their jobs, he adds.

One thing to remember about that study, and Pazda's as well: You probably react differently to strangers you pass on the street than those you're confronted with in a lab setting, where the questions the scientists are asking can’t help but be leading.

If someone sticks a picture of a news anchor wearing a loose top in front of you and asks you to rate her competence, you're going to grasp at any possible clue to make your decision because you have to make a decision or a judgment. You have no other information on the anchor—you don’t know her, you don't know her background, and you certainly don’t know her experience, which would be more reasonable measures of her competence. Instead, you're making a snap judgment and for that, you tend to rely on your cultural experience.

And when it comes to the color red and women, that cultural background tells you that red equals sex. In Pazda's study, he ran three experiments. The first one tested whether women perceived other women dressing in red as more sexually receptive than those clothed in the same outfit, but in white. The second test sought to determine if that perception of being more open to sex implied sexual promiscuity. And the final experiment tested whether another color (green) and outfit changed the results.

Each participant was shown either the red-clothed image or the white- or green-clothed one, and then asked to rate (on a sliding scale) the woman's openness to sexual encounters and her promiscuity even though they knew nothing else about the women in the pictures. They couldn't hear their voices or watch their behaviors. With no other information to go on, what were the participants basing their decisions on?

They were likely relying on deeply ingrained—and even unconscious—biases connecting the color red to sex. "When we asked, is this person interested in sex, or how seductive or flirtatious is this person, they are drawing on whatever cues are available to make judgments about them," says Pazda. "One of the only cues is using the dress or shirt color."

That may only play a small part in people's first impressions of others in real life, however, where they have facial expressions, behavior, conversations and other information on which to base their decision. "People aren't always making judgments about others automatically," says Pazda. "But if we stop and make a judgment, color may influence how that judgment is processed."